I was myself so smitten in public opinion that it was the almost universal view that my political life was at last ended.

Long ago, I made up my mind that when things were said involving only me, I would pay no attention to them, except when valid criticism was carried by which I could profit.

I thought how little interest the men before me had in the results of the war, and how little knowledge they had of “what it was all about.

When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest.

The whole drama of the world is such tragedy that I am weary of the spectacle.

I know enough of the world now to have almost lost the capacity of being much surprised by anything

I came to the conclusion that people were just peculiar, I withdrew from them, and never thought about them until I was forced to.

I have neither curiosity, interest, pain nor pleasure, in anything, good or evil, they can say of me. I feel only a slight disgust, and a sort of wonder that they presume to write my name.

All that has happened is that the public has adjusted to incoherence and been amused into indifference.

"Involuntarily it appeared to me that there, somewhere, was someone who amused himself by watching how I lived for thirty or forty years: learning, developing, maturing in body and mind, and how, having with matured mental powers reached the summit of life from which it all lay before me, I stood on that summit — like an arch-fool — seeing clearly that there is nothing in life, and that there has been and will be nothing. And he was amused... But whether that "someone" laughing at me existed or not, I was none the better off. I could give no reasonable meaning to any single action or to my whole life. I was only surprised that I could have avoided understanding this from the very beginning — it has been so long known to all. Today or tomorrow sickness and death will come (they had come already) to those I love or to me; nothing will remain but stench and worms. Sooner or later my affairs, whatever they may be, will be forgotten, and I shall not exist. Then why go on making any effort?... How can man fail to see this? And how go on living? That is what is surprising! One can only live while one is intoxicated with life; as soon as one is sober it is impossible not to see that it is all a mere fraud and a stupid fraud! That is precisely what it is: there is nothing either amusing or witty about it, it is simply cruel and stupid."

The media are less a window on reality, than a stage on which officials and journalists perform self-scripted, self-serving fictions.

I have lowered my identity. I have lowered the chattering of my mind. I don’t care about things that don’t really matter. I don’t get involved in politics. I don’t hang around unhappy people. I really value my time on this earth. I read philosophy. I meditate. I hang around with happy people.

One after another of his old friends and comrades fell back and vanished from his ken, for he lost interest in them when he saw less and less difference between these men of the opposition and that majority which they attacked. Everything seemed to him to melt together in one great hostile mass of boredom.

Politics, these days, is no occupation
for an educated man, a man of character.
Ignorance and total lousiness are better.